Screen Queens: Feminism in Pop Culture This Week 6/22

Screen Queens is LadyClever’s new roundup featuring feminist entertainment headlines from stage and screen each week: innovative portrayals and story arcs, sketches and comedy, appearances and awards, interviews and news, and more.

Dang Ten: It’s not a twenty dollar bill, nor is it a solo appearance, and it doesn’t really honor intersectional feminism, however… Thursday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew formally announced in a statement, “We have only made changes to the faces on our currency a few times since bills were first put into circulation, and I’m proud that the new 10 will be the first bill in more than a century to feature the portrait of a woman.” The bill will released in 2020 to honor a century passing since the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote, but it’s important to remember that men and women of color were not given the right to vote until President Lyndon Johnson signed The Voting Rights Act into law in 1965.

Model Behavior: Cara Delevingne landed an interview with Vogue to go along with the July 2015 cover, and her interviewer completely and thoroughly botched discussing her love life. When it came to the subject of her her bisexuality, the author wrote: “She conveys a Millennial’s ennui at the expectation that she ought to settle upon a sexual orientation, and her interests — video games, yes; manicures, no — might register as gender-defiant in the realm of dresses and heels.” Ah yes, the elusive gender-defiant female who dares to dabble in playing video games and doesn’t love sitting at the nail salon. What a rare specimen. “It is at this point that I realize this profile was absolutely 100% written by a dude. Not a man, but a dude,” quipped writerStef Schwartz.

When Your Smizing, The Whole World Smizes With You: Last Wednesday, supermodel and entrepreneur Tyra Banks shared a surprising selfie, “without any of the layers of makeup and photoshopping we usually see her through,” Buzzfeed said. She accompanied the Instagram post with the following caption: “You know how people say #nofilter but you know there’s a freakin’ filter on their pic?… Maybe you’re thinking, “Whoa, she looks ROUGH.” And if you are, great! You deserve to see the REAL me. The REALLY real me. #RawAndReal” Kudos to the model for setting a great example for her followers on social media.

Busted:The first pics of all-female Ghostbusters on set finally surfaced last week. “The funny ladies were snapped running out of a mock Bronx school, with Kate McKinnon covered in slime and Melissa McCarthy carrying what appeared to be the new and improved ghost trap.” Could the site of oozy ectoplasm mean that the green good guy Slimer will be rebooted along with the team? And if so, might he actually be a lady now too?!? #slimeher

Bait & Switch By Madonna: There’s a desire to want to support our favorite stars as they grow older and roll with their changes, especially as the entertainment industry is so much tougher on females and gives them a shorter shelf life. But, man, Madonna is making it difficult.“Bitch I’m Madonna” arrives with all of the swagger and braggadocio befitting a new track by a pop icon with a title like that,” The Daily Beast wrote. “But for all of the bombast, why does it mostly seem just pathetic and sad?” Headlines screamed how Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry all make split-second appearances in the icon’s new video and did manage to grab viral status for Madge, but most critics were quick to point out that the Rolodex-of-friends razzledazzle did little to make the song enjoyable. Did Madonna’s famous “friends” get you to tune into the new track just to take a look? What did you think? — Casandra Armour